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Post by vegalyra on Mar 29, 2021 0:48:06 GMT
I'm probably more into film now than ever before, I constantly discover more and more old (classic) movies that I enjoy. I'm with spiderwort though, many modern films seem to have an excessive amount of profanity and explicit sexual situations that I just dont care for. I'll occasionally watch modern films, but probably 90% of what I see is from the early 1980's and before (typically 1930's to 1960's - my sweet spot). If a modern film comes out that pertains to a historical period, particularly the classical era, then I'm interested, but those are few and far between.
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 29, 2021 15:44:42 GMT
Oh, yes, indeed. I got to do that with my beloved idol, Kazan, and I'll treasure the memory of that forever. But time with Lumet would have been a truly great gift, too. I urge you to check out his book on directing ("Making Movies") if you haven't already. It's not long and is very practical, notwithstanding his magical moment-to-moment approach in his on-set work. I don't know the book 'Making Movies'. I've seen video clips and there was a guy on the old imdb Classic Film board, Chris-435, who didn't like Sidney Lumet's movies but did like listening to him speak about making movies. I'll look out for it, thanks for the recommendation.
Did Elia Kazan ever comment upon Sidney Lumet? Or, did they know each other in person?
I do know they knew each other, probably very well through the years, because Lumet was one of the original members of the Actors Studio, which Kazan started with Cheryl Crawford and Robert Whitehead in 1947. As for the time I spent with Kazan, we talked mostly about him and his work, then major league football, which he had a strong interest in. And psychology. He was an astute lay psychologist, as he works demonstrate. But I'm sure that he would have had very nice things to say about Lumet, if I'd ever mentioned him, which I never did.
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Post by lune7000 on Mar 29, 2021 21:00:49 GMT
I have just discovered movies (to some extent) and am digging into many oldies so it is unlikely I will burn out soon- but I can see a burnout coming on the horizon.
The problem with all movies is that they cost money to make. This leads to the need for plots/subjects that will predictably pay off- which leads to the same old stories being re-hashed in the same old genres. I think the massive influx of CGI, sex, violence, profanity and attention deficit editing is a desperate attempt to hold onto a dwindling audience. Every character in a movie or TV show seems to be a super model and every story is just soap opera- no great themes anymore.
I am developing a collection of outstanding film- and then I will just watch it again after I have forgotten most of the scenes. I can see an end coming to this process after I have assembled a greatest hits set. There is still good stuff coming out today (especially in horror) but I can't invest the time in a loser anymore so I don't explore as much. Romance movies have fallen the most- they are just raw lust now.
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Post by timshelboy on Mar 30, 2021 0:13:20 GMT
The reason I struggle on is to live long enough to track down the latest movie at the top of my MOST WANTED list Currently it is this in which Shirley Eaton plays a bikini clad machine gun wielding partisan taking on the Nazi menace - source welcome - I found it on some site in Pakistan but they won't take paypal and the P&P is through the roof....  I probably see more modern movies I'd "recommend" due to availability... but there are more I'd highly recommend from the classic era |
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Post by london777 on Mar 30, 2021 2:31:42 GMT
I cannot think of anything sadder than someone dying, and that being the very last film they ever watched. I would feel cheated by life.
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Post by Fox in the Snow on Mar 30, 2021 2:49:13 GMT
Mine has gone up and down over the years. Been on a relatively high plateau for a few years now. Main difference is I'm a lot more selective now. There's lots of things I have little interest in exploring and as the number of films I can watch is finite, I'm concentrating on the stuff that most interests me.
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Post by timshelboy on Mar 30, 2021 9:00:39 GMT
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Post by TheOriginalPinky on Mar 30, 2021 11:37:58 GMT
Yes. I couldn't imagine life without films.
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Post by london777 on Mar 31, 2021 1:26:35 GMT
I've been quite overwhelmed by the volume of film production these days. There's just too much of it ... And so much of it is bad and/or is not really interesting to me at all. I hate the gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity in too many films these days. Lazy writing, I call it. And, to me, deeply offensive. That makes me weary and wary of too many of the new films, and I've seen the old ones too many times (with the exception of some foreign films, but right now I can't read subtitles very well). So I'm a bit at sea about it at the moment. Yes, I still love the medium that has defined me since I was 13, but I also desperately long for more rich and meaningful productions that inspire me without offending me. I know films are still being made that can do that, but they are absolutely in the minority right now/these days, in my opinion. That said, I'm hoping my negative feelings will change in time if/as more and more films follow the trajectory of the films I saw last year, which provided the sense of art and humanity that I long for ( Minari, Nomadland, The Father, Never Rarely Sometimes Always and The Land, among a few others). For those experiences alone I'm trying to be optimistic. Hope it pays off, not only for me, but for the culture at large. I am even older than you, spider, but I do not seem to suffer the same impediments as you to enjoying contemporary films. I often say that this is the golden age of cinema, but if you find that a bit provocative, then I will take a step back and say that this decade, and the previous one, are not inferior to any decade before the Millenium. I am sure you are too fair-minded to compare the best films of just one or two recent decades to the accumulation of good films from the previous ten decades. Some of your obstacles to enjoyment seem self-imposed. You write "I've been quite overwhelmed by the volume of film production these days. There's just too much of it, with so much streaming in so many venues." Well, I have never watched a streamed film in my life. So if you have too much choice (though that is a strange problem to have in any walk of life) why do you not simply ignore streamed films? The drawback is you will miss some of the latest "buzz" movies, but that cannot be of any concern to you. Like me, if a film survives its initial hype you can always catch up with it a year or five later on DVD (usually for a trivial amount). Then you write "I hate the gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity in too many films these days." The key word here is 'gratuitous'. I find it extremely easy to avoid films that lay on thick the sex and violence for commercial reasons. They are pretty obvious. You should be able to identify them too. You write "I also desperately long for more rich and meaningful productions that inspire me". You set a pretty high bar there, spider! Films that good do not come along too often, but the steady trickle of them continues today, as ever. What I would like to know is what modern films, which would otherwise have met your high standards, have been ruined for you by gratuitious sex, violence, or profanity? Let us take Quentin Tarantino for example. He is an enormously skilled film-maker, with often ingenious plots, a reverence for earlier cinema not less than your own, and he attracts the best actors and technicians. But he does include lots of gratuitous violence and profanity. But we all know what he is like. You know what he is like. It is pointless attending a Tarantino movie and then complaining about those things. Just avoid him. As you write, there is plenty else to choose from. A digression: My own bugbear is sentimentality. Sentimentality is ersatz emotion for those incapable of feeling genuine empathy. It is the bane of popular culture worldwide, but is particularly predominant in US culture. You can see it when a decent foreign film is remade by Hollywood. The first thing they do is slap on a happy ending (the notorious Hollywood Ending) then they cram in as many sentimental tropes as possible. That is why I honour the small handful of US films devoid of sentimentality. Their makers have been very brave. Sentimentality is not as easy to spot as gratuitous violence, sex, or profanity. Sometimes I finish a movie feeling good, and it takes me some time, hours or even weeks, to realise that I have been 'played'. Then I tip my hat to the director's skill, but not to his ethics. Digression ended: So what films have tricked you, spider? Where have gratuitous sex, violence and profanity popped up in an underhand way to spoil your enjoyment? It can happen, but very rarely to me because I choose my viewing carefully.
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Post by jeffersoncody on Mar 31, 2021 4:53:20 GMT
I crave films like a junkie craves heroin. So yes, the passion still runs deep.
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Post by gw on Mar 31, 2021 5:10:52 GMT
I like films still but for animated, sci fi, and fantasy content I am starting to prefer television just because the plots are more complex. It used to be that animated television was in the shadow of film but now it seems that there's been a sort of magnetic polar reversal. For more normal live action I'm more biased towards movies because the series aren't as conceptually oriented so they don't interest me as much.
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Post by london777 on Mar 31, 2021 15:20:18 GMT
I crave films like a junkie craves heroin. So yes, the passion still runs deep. LOL. This analogy nearly got me into trouble last week. I spend a lot of time on the seafront here. It is known for young men on motor-bikes prowling past the bars to offer illegal substances. I was at one bar and said I would wait for my 'supplier' to arrive before ordering. The bar-owner got agitated and beckoned me to one side. He told me that the other guy with us, his waitress' boyfriend, was a cop, and he did not want his bar known as a location for buying illegal drugs. I had to explain that I was waiting for my supplier of DVDs and that movies were the only 'drug' in my life. |
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Post by spiderwort on Apr 3, 2021 17:51:30 GMT
I've been quite overwhelmed by the volume of film production these days. There's just too much of it ... And so much of it is bad and/or is not really interesting to me at all. I hate the gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity in too many films these days. Lazy writing, I call it. And, to me, deeply offensive. That makes me weary and wary of too many of the new films, and I've seen the old ones too many times (with the exception of some foreign films, but right now I can't read subtitles very well). So I'm a bit at sea about it at the moment. Yes, I still love the medium that has defined me since I was 13, but I also desperately long for more rich and meaningful productions that inspire me without offending me. I know films are still being made that can do that, but they are absolutely in the minority right now/these days, in my opinion. That said, I'm hoping my negative feelings will change in time if/as more and more films follow the trajectory of the films I saw last year, which provided the sense of art and humanity that I long for ( Minari, Nomadland, The Father, Never Rarely Sometimes Always and The Land, among a few others). For those experiences alone I'm trying to be optimistic. Hope it pays off, not only for me, but for the culture at large. I am even older than you, spider, but I do not seem to suffer the same impediments as you to enjoying contemporary films. I often say that this is the golden age of cinema, but if you find that a bit provocative, then I will take a step back and say that this decade, and the previous one, are not inferior to any decade before the Millenium. I am sure you are too fair-minded to compare the best films of just one or two recent decades to the accumulation of good films from the previous ten decades. Some of your obstacles to enjoyment seem self-imposed. You write "I've been quite overwhelmed by the volume of film production these days. There's just too much of it, with so much streaming in so many venues." Well, I have never watched a streamed film in my life. So if you have too much choice (though that is a strange problem to have in any walk of life) why do you not simply ignore streamed films? The drawback is you will miss some of the latest "buzz" movies, but that cannot be of any concern to you. Like me, if a film survives its initial hype you can always catch up with it a year or five later on DVD (usually for a trivial amount). Then you write "I hate the gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity in too many films these days." The key word here is 'gratuitous'. I find it extremely easy to avoid films that lay on thick the sex and violence for commercial reasons. They are pretty obvious. You should be able to identify them too. You write "I also desperately long for more rich and meaningful productions that inspire me". You set a pretty high bar there, spider! Films that good do not come along too often, but the steady trickle of them continues today, as ever. What I would like to know is what modern films, which would otherwise have met your high standards, have been ruined for you by gratuitious sex, violence, or profanity? Let us take Quentin Tarantino for example. He is an enormously skilled film-maker, with often ingenious plots, a reverence for earlier cinema not less than your own, and he attracts the best actors and technicians. But he does include lots of gratuitous violence and profanity. But we all know what he is like. You know what he is like. It is pointless attending a Tarantino movie and then complaining about those things. Just avoid him. As you write, there is plenty else to choose from. A digression: My own bugbear is sentimentality. Sentimentality is ersatz emotion for those incapable of feeling genuine empathy. It is the bane of popular culture worldwide, but is particularly predominant in US culture. You can see it when a decent foreign film is remade by Hollywood. The first thing they do is slap on a happy ending (the notorious Hollywood Ending) then they cram in as many sentimental tropes as possible. That is why I honour the small handful of US films devoid of sentimentality. Their makers have been very brave. Sentimentality is not as easy to spot as gratuitous violence, sex, or profanity. Sometimes I finish a movie feeling good, and it takes me some time, hours or even weeks, to realise that I have been 'played'. Then I tip my hat to the director's skill, but not to his ethics. Digression ended: So what films have tricked you, spider? Where have gratuitous sex, violence and profanity popped up in an underhand way to spoil your enjoyment? It can happen, but very rarely to me because I choose my viewing carefully.
Sorry for the delay in my response, London; business has detained me. I think you make some interesting, thoughtful comments here. And you could be right; some of my obstacles could be self-imposed, though in the main I doubt it. I have a feeling that we should just agree to disagree about this particular subject. I will say this with certainty, however: I absolutely avoid all films that I know or feel certain are going to offend me, Tarantino films included. I take very good care of myself in that regard. I will even throw awards screeners in the trash if after a few minutes of viewing I'm put off by what I consider to be gratuitous vulgarities. Life is too short to pursue the nightmares of others. I don't choose to spend real life time with people who use the F-word in every other sentence, so I'm not going to watch any film where that is done. That's who I am these days, who I think I've always been. Less is always more for me. And the celebration of basic human goodness (even in a dark and depressing film) means everything to me. I see far too little of that in the films made these days. Not all, of course. But in way too many. I simply don't have the patience anymore. I believe that human beings are still basically good at heart [as Anne Frank said]. And I want to see intelligent explorations of that. I don't give a crap about the garbage Tarentino and others like him spew out. Oh, brother, I think better stop before I get carried away. Sorry. Gotta make a business call anyway. Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Hope I haven't annoyed you with my response.
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Post by louise on Apr 17, 2021 22:59:45 GMT
I still have a passion for old films. Very few modern ones arouse my enthusiasm.
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